Difficult to Backtrack a Promotion

As a young project manager, Mario was successful at meeting deadlines and holding profit margins on each of the four projects he completed. Paul, his manager, wanted to give him a promotion, but was gun-shy.

“The last project manager I promoted did well on smaller projects,” Paul described. “But the accountabilities of longer timespan projects overwhelmed him. In the end, I had to let him go. It was almost as if the promotion ruined a good junior project manager.”

You don’t test a person by promoting them. Though not impossible, it is difficult to backtrack a promotion. Instead, test a person’s capability by giving them project work, longer timespan projects. Only if they are successful, do they get the corner office.

Don’t promote the person to test them. Test them with project work to earn the promotion.

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One thought on “Difficult to Backtrack a Promotion”

Was the promotion to long term projects or to managing other engineers(people). A common misconception is that a great worker makes a great manager. Doing work and managing other people to do work are two separate animals and require two separate skill sets.